It's All In the Groove
Listening to NPR's Fresh Air this evening, songwriter John Henry was talking about a song he wrote that was recorded by (and became a hit for) Madonna. They played his version and Madonna's back-to-back was truly remarkable to hear. Henry commented that even some of his friends didn't know it was the same song. "It's all in the groove," he said, which he added was hard for a word-man to accept.

That got me thinking about the power of the music beyond the words. The music takes poetry and turns it into, well, music. It adds a new definition and style and power and even meaning to the words. It can take great words and meaning and lose them in boredom or elevate mediocre words to the transcendent.

Which in some ways adds to the worship music wars discussion. Because the words and music are often so intimately united in our emotions and souls, we feel as if it is sacreligious to change them. We connect other, far from sacred words, with a type of music that we think doesn't fit sacred texts.

But the music is not the words- and vice versa- although they can and do affect each other. But one of the neat things in recent years has been the rediscovery by some contemporary Christian musicians of the great hymns and hymn texts. The result has been a re-empowering of both music and words. It is the passion of great words being underwritten by passionate music. It is nothing short of spiritual.